


Secrets and Lies

by Kalypso



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-03 14:39:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John asks Molly to help him clear Sherlock by finding out the truth about Moriarty - which sends them back to a very cold case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets and Lies

**Author's Note:**

> When I set out to write this story, the whole point was to use the fact that I had decided which London swimming pool featured in _The Great Game_. We know the final scene was actually filmed at Bristol South Swimming Pool, but clearly that's standing in for somewhere in London, and after a lot of research I settled on Ironmonger Row Baths which, like Bristol South, is a 30-metre, six-lane pool, opened in 1931 and Grade II listed. It was functioning in the mid-1980s according to my _London Blue Guide_ , so was probably available for Carl's swimming tournament in 1989, and closed for refurbishment in May 2010, shortly after _The Great Game_ (it reopened in November 2012). The one snag is that we can see a piece of string on Sherlock's map linking his Carl documents to what is presumably the pool location, and though it's not far out it seems to point a little way south of Ironmonger Row - apparently stopping somewhere in the City. But though there are pools in the City, I haven't found one that's such a good match, so my explanation is that for complicated reasons Sherlock's string bends round a pin in the City and then points north to Ironmonger Row. None of this turned out to have any relevance to the plot.
> 
> Thanks to DC for medical advice, and to him and quarryquest for information about Barts which didn't make the final cut.

John Watson had been nursing a cup of cold coffee for an hour by the time Molly Hooper arrived. He was sitting in a corner of the canteen, hoping no one else would notice him. It was the first time he'd been to Barts in months; he still couldn't go near the West Smithfield side of the site.

But she was here now, nibbling a pasta salad at a table by the window. He waited until she had nearly finished, then abandoned the coffee and took the seat facing hers.

"Hullo, Molly."

"Oh! John..." Panic flickered across her face. No more than he had come to expect when he met people he'd known through Sherlock. "Are you looking for Mike?"

"No. I wanted to see you."

"Oh... well... it's very nice to... you look... well."

He didn't look well, and he hadn't come for small talk.

"Molly, I need to ask you for something."

"Yes, of course, anything I can do." She looked even more scared.

"It's a lot to ask, and I'll understand if you say no. But I'd like to talk to you about Moriarty."

She was silent.

"Sherlock said we'd beat him if we could destroy his Richard Brook identity. So that's the way to clear his name - Sherlock's, I mean. Prove Moriarty _wasn't_ an actor hired to play an imaginary criminal mastermind, he really did do all those things."

He waited. Still no reply.

"If... you think that too. If you still believe in Sherlock."

Molly looked straight at him then, her eyes bright with tears.

"Yes. I believe in him." She hesitated for a moment. "And Moriarty... that was all true."

"How can you be sure?"

She wiped her eyes, and spoke more calmly. "Because of what happened to me. If Sherlock had hired him... I know he could be unkind, sometimes, but I can't see why he'd have told Jim to seduce me. If they wanted to contrive a meeting in front of witnesses, there were hundreds of ways - they didn't need me to introduce them. Actually, if they already knew each other, why would they contrive a meeting at all - what was it for?"

John cleared his throat. "I suppose, if you were a doubter, you'd say it was another chance for Sherlock to show off. That he'd told Jim what to do, what to wear, so he could read all the details to us."

Molly shook her head. "If he'd done it in front of anyone else, then maybe - but us? The last two people in the world he needed to impress. We'd seen him do it so many times."

"So... can you help me? You did spend time with him. With Jim, or whoever he really was - presumably Moriarty was another alias. I've looked online, and the only Jim Moriarty I can find was a comic villain in the Goon Show."

She sighed. "I'd really like to help, John, but I didn't know him all that long, and nearly everything he did or said to me must have been lies. Even his accent - when I knew him, he sounded like someone from round here, but later on, when he was on trial, wasn't he supposed to be Irish?"

"Yes, he sounded Irish when I met him. At the pool, and later at the trial..."

"The pool?"

John paused. He wasn't sure how much Molly knew, and explaining that her then-boyfriend had strapped him to a bomb as bait for Sherlock might upset her. He wanted her focused.

"He confronted us at a swimming pool. Ironmonger Row. That was when he... revealed himself."

"Ironmonger Row?"

"It was where he committed his first crime, apparently. He murdered a boy called Carl Powers, who'd come up from Brighton for a swimming tournament. Years ago, but Sherlock remembered it - he said he was only a kid himself, but he'd spotted something wrong in the newspaper reports."

Molly frowned. "But if Sherlock was a kid then, so was Jim. Why would he kill the other boy?"

"I don't know. He said something about Carl laughing at him. Sherlock tried to find out - I remember he said the other classmates were in the clear. But Moriarty kept throwing new puzzles at us, and we had to keep beating deadlines before he blew someone up..."

"But if you want to know who he really was, that must be a lead."

"You're right," John said slowly. "Sherlock thought it was important that Moriarty admitted knowing Carl. It's the only crime we're aware of where he seemed to have a personal motive rather than setting it up for someone else. OK, so I have to go back and solve the Carl Powers murder."

" _We_ have to solve it," said Molly. "I owe you this, John."

John didn't think she owed him anything, but Molly was the type who'd always have a guilt complex, and he wasn't going to turn her down. She might still know something significant about Jim that she hadn't realised yet. And in any case, Sherlock had always said it was easier when you could talk about cases to someone else.

"Thanks, Molly," he said. "Sherlock had cuttings on the Powers case. I'll look them up, and give you a call."

* 

He rang her the following day. "I've found Sherlock's file. There was an address for Graham Powers - Carl's father. He retired to Arundel some years ago, and he's prepared to meet us. Can you come on Saturday afternoon?"

"Yes, that's fine. I can drive you. What did you tell him?"

"I said I was a doctor and I'd been reading about Carl's case, and there were some aspects I'd like to discuss with him. He was a bit doubtful, but in the end he said I could come."

"Oh, John. You will be careful with him?"

"I'll do my best. And if you're there you can help with that. But I think we'll have to tell him something of what it's about..."

* 

At three o'clock on Saturday, Molly parked in a narrow, sloping side-street in Arundel. She and John made their way to No. 12 and rang the doorbell.

"Hullo? Dr Watson?" An elderly man was blinking at them. "Forgive me, I don't see very well these days. Will you introduce your colleague?"

"Thank you very much for agreeing to meet us, Mr Powers. This is Molly Hooper."

They shook hands.

"Well, you'd better sit down. Wait a minute, I'll rustle up some tea and biscuits..."

"Oh, please let me help." Molly followed him into the kitchen, while John hovered in the corridor. Mr Powers insisted on carrying the tray into the sitting room, but allowed Molly to pour the tea and hand round the cups.

"Now, I'd like you to explain what all this is about. It's more than twenty years since Carl died, so why are you looking into it again?"

"Mr Powers..." John licked his lips. "I'm sorry, it must be very painful for you to have to think about it..."

"He was my son, I think about him every day. But why are _you_ so interested?"

"I... I don't know if the name Sherlock Holmes means anything to you?"

Mr Powers leant back in his armchair and considered. "Yes. He was that private detective who recently committed suicide after being discredited."

"He was a very close friend of ours, and we believe he was framed. We saw him prove his abilities repeatedly, and we want to clear his name."

"It's sad losing a friend, and I understand you want to do what you can for him. But what has he to do with Carl?"

"Sherlock was interested in Carl's case, and... I'm afraid he believed it was murder."

Mr Powers suddenly sagged. John looked anxiously at Molly, tense and poised on the edge of her seat.

"I'm sorry, Mr Powers," she said. "This must be an awful shock to you. But if there's any possibility..."

"...if there's any possibility it's true, I would owe it to Carl to find out," he said. "But I don't think it's possible. It was properly investigated at the time, and it was clearly an accident: Carl had an epileptic fit in the water, and he drowned. Why should your friend think anything else?"

"His shoes were missing..." said John.

"His _shoes_?" Mr Powers looked incredulous. "They were, as it happens, but what on earth has that to do with murder?"

"They turned up, twenty years later. Sherlock found traces of poison on them."

"Poisoned shoes? Oh, really, this sounds like some sort of Jacobean melodrama. In any case, how did he know they were Carl's?"

"The style dated them to 1989, and there were traces of Sussex mud."

Mr Powers snorted. "And how did he think they were poisoned?"

"Did Carl have eczema?"

The old man blinked. "Yes. Common enough at his age."

"Sherlock thought the poison was added to the cream he rubbed in to treat it. That was why there were traces on the shoes."

"And who would have done this?"

"I don't know. Sherlock didn't work that out. We hoped we could complete the story."

"By finding out that Carl had some terrible feud with a master poisoner? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not aware of him having any enemies. He was a brilliant young sportsman, very popular with his schoolmates. I know bookish children can attract resentment and bullying, but we never had that problem with Carl."

"What about the fit?" asked Molly. "Had he a history?"

Mr Powers turned towards her. "At the time, we didn't know about it. But afterwards, Eric remembered a couple of episodes."

"Eric?"

"His brother. Eric remembered a few times when Carl suddenly stopped and stared into space for a few seconds. We were told that those were probably absence seizures. Apparently some children go on to develop full-blown seizures, and it seems that's what happened to Carl."

"From petit mal to grand mal," said John thoughtfully. "It's possible."

"What I still don't see," said Mr Powers, "is how your friend Sherlock jumped from a pair of 1980s shoes, with or without Sussex mud, to Carl. How could he make such an obscure connection?"

"He remembered the case - he was a schoolboy himself when it happened, but he always thought there was something wrong about it. I think it was what started his interest in crime."

"Ah," said Mr Powers. "Well, that's the explanation. His first case, an unsolved mystery from his schooldays. It captured his imagination, he developed a fantasy about it being murder, and years later he finds a pair of shoes that remind him of Carl, so he decides he's finally solved the crime. I'm sure your friend did have remarkable abilities, but in this case he relied too much on his childhood imagination. Carl's death was the first act of our family tragedy, but there was nothing sinister about it."

"The first act?" asked Molly.

"Yes. I mentioned Eric just now. He died ten years after Carl. A car crash in Canada; he was studying for a doctorate in mathematics at Toronto."

"I'm so sorry," she said. "Was he the bookish one, then?"

"He was. Quite different from Carl; Eric was the brainbox. But good company."

"He must have been a comfort to you after Carl died."

"Just so. I don't know what we'd have done without Eric then. He could even make my wife laugh again. He had such a sense of humour. He loved my old Goon records."

"Goon records?"

"He liked to do funny voices - he was always mimicking Spike Milligan."

"Is that their photo on the desk?"

"Yes. I can't see them clearly any more, but I like to have it there."

Molly stood up and went over for a closer look at the photo. She held it up for John to see. A dark-haired woman, seated, flanked by two young boys, also dark-haired. John recognised Carl from the photos in Sherlock's records. He recognised the older boy too, though he hadn't seen him at that age before.

"Mr Powers," he said. "You have been so kind in letting us talk to you on what is clearly a very difficult subject, and very patient in listening to some rather wild theories about it. I'm sorry if they've caused you any distress. I think your explanation of Sherlock's view is absolutely plausible. He was wrong about Carl: what happened was no more, and no less, than a very tragic accident."

The old man rose to his feet and held out his hand. John got up, too, and took it.

"Dr Watson, I'm glad that you can be sensible about it. I know that, when you lose someone who's very close to you, your mind is constantly running over everything they did and said, wondering if things could have been different, or if there's something you could have done. And there's nothing wrong in remembering; it's good to remember them as they were. But in the end, you have to let them rest. There's nothing more you can do. My wife couldn't accept that; the second blow, losing Eric, broke her completely. I hoped bringing her here, to Arundel, would be a fresh start of sorts, but it was too late; I couldn't help her."

After John let go of his hand, Molly gripped it in both of hers.

"You're a good man, Mr Powers," she said. "It wasn't your fault. I'm glad I met you."

They walked back to the car.

* 

"You did the right thing, John," said Molly, as they drove up the London Road.

"What else could we do?" he asked. "Tell him Eric didn't die in Canada? That he faked it and became a criminal mastermind, with a string of murders to his name? Starting with his own kid brother?"

"Poor man," she murmured. "But can we use it to clear Sherlock?"

"I'm not sure that it matters now," said John. "I might tell Lestrade - he probably ought to know, and I trust him not to bother Mr Powers. It's not as if we can get Moriarty - Eric - convicted of the murder. But we've proved we were right to believe in Sherlock."

"You weren't quite sure, then?"

"I thought I was. But the relief of knowing I was right... maybe I did need proof."

"And just think, you've solved a case that eluded Sherlock!"

"Perhaps."

"What do you mean?"

"Perhaps he did know. I thought he never followed up, but Sherlock was fascinated by Moriarty... would he really have let it drop? He had Mr Powers' address. He could easily have called on some pretext, and he'd have spotted that photo the moment he got inside, which was all he'd need."

"That's just conjecture."

"Maybe. But it took me a while to find Carl Powers' file. It wasn't under P, or C, or even M for Moriarty. Sherlock put it under E. For Eric."

"But why wouldn't he tell you?"

"Oh, you know what Sherlock was like..."

"You mean he kept things from you? Even then? I thought he shared everything with you."

"You're joking, he drove me crazy! Always keeping things back so that he could pull them out at the most dramatic moment. And with Moriarty... he might not have thought it was all that useful, knowing who he was once... It wasn't as if Eric was going home to see his old dad, so it wouldn't help catch him. Sherlock might just have let the information lie until he saw a way to use it."

"Maybe you're right," said Molly. "I used to think I should be completely honest, and tell everyone the truth, where it concerned them. But sometimes you may have to keep things to yourself. Even lie about them."

"Like today, you mean?" John asked. He was afraid she was tearing up again; he'd better think of something cheerful to talk about before it affected her driving.

"Yes," she said. "And... yes."


End file.
